“…Functional balance is that which makes a product work and sell most effectively at the lowest total cost… To start toward the attainment of this balance, we must first have an understanding of the relationships between all functions.”
The comparison and evaluation process requires a complete understanding of the data gathered in the information phase including user/customer attitudes and both primary and secondary source information. The simplest method of assigning relative importance is to assume all functions are equal. But that is rarely the case. One approach to establishing the relative importance is for the value study team to mutually agree upon adjustments to the “all equal” assumption. For example, in developing a two way radio the functions and their weighting might be agreed upon as:
• Assure Reliability – 25%
• Ease Maintenance - 25%
• Improve Appearance - 10%
• Resist Shock - 20%
• Assure Range - 20%
But what is the real basis for a valid decision? It must be made with equal participation from each team member. In practice, it is impossible to assemble five to seven persons for such an evaluation and have them all feel equal. Certain individuals will be more articulate, more dominant⎯and their weighting suggestions consequently will be more influential. It has been said that the making of business decisions is based primarily upon eliminating personal loss or risk. The potential loss or risks to these people will dominate the scene. For example, if the maintainability expert is a dominant individual, then that person would tend to have the maintainability function rated higher. But that would be at the expense of one or more of the other functions since the total must be 100%. In actual usage, the most common practice is for the team to weight the functions individually and then calculate a single average of each team member’s figures. To eliminate the “personal” factor, a second approach called “paired comparisons” may be used. It is based on the assumption that the simplest and least emotional decision is a basic yes or no. This can be done by comparing each function with each other, which involves making a large number of single point decisions, each based on a yes or no answer, rather than to juggle several factors in one decision.
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File | MIME type | Size (KB) | Language | Download | |
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Functional Relationships- An Overview.pdf | application/pdf | 320.6 KB | English | DOWNLOAD! |